SAY, HEY---READ THIS ONE!

On Sunday, in "The New York Times" Book Review Section, was a review of a new biography of Willie Mays, the Hall-of-Fame New York/San Francisco Giant star of the fifties and sixties, written by James S. Hirsch, who previouly had written a well-received biography, "Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter", the story of the boxing champion who went to prison and then redeemed his life. I definitely want to read this book, but what really caught my attention was the review by Pete Hamill, one of the better journalist/writers extant. Let me quote:

"A long time ago in America, there was a beautiful game called baseball. This was before thirty major-league teams were scattered in a blurry variety of divisions; before 162- game seasons and extended playoffs and fans who watched World Series games in thick down jackets; before the D.H. came to the American League; before AstroTurf on baseball fields and aluminum bats on sandlots; before complete games by pitchers were a rarity; before ballparks were named for corporations instead of individuals; and long, long before the innocence of the game was permanently stained by the filthy deception of steroids."

On reading these introductory lines, all I could do was shout, "Amen!". All of my favorite gripes about baseball today. I suppose we all suffer as we age from the loss of innocence, the purity of a game we played passionately as kids and loved growing up. Maybe it's symbolic of life, that loss of purity, as time weathers and abuses us. we bemoan the lack of simpler times.

I was a young adult by the time Willie Mays came along, but he was cut from the same heroic mold as Stan "the Man" Musial, Warren Spahn, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio---you add to the list---of demigods and super-heros we admired growing up. Willie played the game with verve and love. He caught hell from the black community for what they called his Uncle Tom attitude by not espousing publically the need for civil rights, such as Jackie Robinson did; Willie said he let his baseball do the talking, and I'm sure his skills did a lot to overcome prejudice and amplify admiration, no matter what your color. No pills, no shots, just plain unmitigated skill.

I can't wait to read this one.